Katie Holmes, Sienna Miller, Simon Doonan, Sarah Jessica Parker, and other stars reveal their favorite spots in the city of light

“The Place des Vosges,” declared model and actress Dree Hemingway, great-granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, at the Chanel dinner for the Tribeca Film Festival. “If it’s a beautiful day, you hang out in the park, buy a baguette, do what the Parisians do. But around the corner is my favorite restaurant, Chez Janou. It’s just a simple bistro, the first place I ever tried mussels.”

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“I live in Paris,” said supermodel Natalia Vodianova, at the United Nations for the Diller-Von Furstenberg Family Awards ceremony, where she was being honored for the work of her Naked Heart Foundation on behalf of orphans and the mentally challenged in her native Russia. “My favorite spot? L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. It’s an incredible restaurant. It’s very cute, really charming, and bloody delicious—beyond anything I’ve ever tried before. Perfection.”

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On the opening night of Los Americanos, restaurateur Billy Gilroy’s hip Mexican cantina in Tribeca, the Inquisitive Guest slipped into a booth with actress Sienna Miller. “It’s really chichi and embarrassing,” she admitted, “but I have a very special place in my heart for the Ritz. When I got engaged, that’s where I spent the night. And I would normally never stay in a hotel that big and that luxurious, but it’s really kind of magical. They’re redoing it now.”

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At the Four Seasons restaurant for the 25th-anniversary fête of TheNew York Observer, actress Katie Holmes kindly paused to reveal her offbeat pit stop in Paris. “There is a great silk-flower shop on the Left Bank,” she told the Inquisitive Guest. “It’s just a beautiful little place that I always visit.”

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Also at the Four Seasons to honor TheNew York Observer, Katie Couric, seen here with New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, recalled the name of her favorite Belle Époque pastry shop. “I like to go to Angelina for the really great hot chocolate,” she said. “It’s just next door to the Meurice hotel.”

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Behind a secret panel upstairs at the Lion, a restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village, HSN was celebrating its relatively new purveyor of lingerie and fragrance, Dita von Teese. “I love Lapérouse,” she said. “It is one of the oldest restaurants in Paris. And famously, men used to bring their mistresses there. You can still book private salons, where the waiters will only enter if you press a button. So there are these gorgeous old rooms, and you have your own window to the street, beautiful lighting you can control, and there are mirrors on the wall where women used to check to see if the diamonds they received were real. It’s just this exquisite place—the next level of seduction.”

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Sparkling with jewels that she said needed to be returned to the host by midnight at Tiffany’s Blue Book Ball at Rockefeller Center, actress Sarah Jessica Parker lit up when asked about Paris. “Oh my gosh. My favorite district in Paris is the Marais, the old Jewish part of town. They have about six parks, tiny little restaurants, and amazing thrift shops!”

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At the Four Seasons, film mogul Harvey Weinstein, seen here with financier Vivi Nevo, mentioned, of all things, an Italian restaurant. “My favorite is Le Stresa, right near the Plaza Athénée. Six brothers run the place—the best Italian food in Paris.”

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On their way into the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party in L.A., David Furnish and Sir Elton seconded that notion. “We like a restaurant called Le Stresa,” answered Furnish. “And the Ritz hotel.”

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In the front row at the Diane von Furstenberg fashion show in Manhattan, author and Barneys creative guru Simon Doonan claimed that he’s drawn in more by the slightly-seamy underside of the French city. “It’s fun to go to the parts of Paris that look like Manhattan’s 14th Street,” he said. “The chichi areas of Paris are kind of . . . whatever. I like the sordid, dismal areas that remind me of a novel by Georges Simenon [the late Belgian pulp-fiction writer who lived in Paris], where there is an angry cabbage-boiling concierge and some depressed tenants.”

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At the New Yorkers for Children annual spring dance, makeup executive Olivia Chantecaille said she considers Le Pavillon de la Reine a very chic hotel. “Every room is different,” she explained. “And it’s on incredibly beautiful square in Paris. I stay there during fashion week.”

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At the Time 100 Gala at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, actor Bryan Cranston brought up the Île Saint-Louis. “It’s this beautiful island. You can cross from the Right Bank or the Left, and all of a sudden you think, Wait a minute, what is this? And there is a café there where I had dinner with my wife and friends. The rain started coming down. It was very Parisian and romantic.”

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“I love the Marais,” said actress Carla Gugino at New York’s Roundabout Theatre gala. “I love that whole area. One of my favorite places is Ladurée, which has beautiful hot chocolate and macarons. Really delicious.”

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Actress Olivia Munn was also at the Time 100 Gala. “Last year, for my birthday, my boyfriend surprised me with a trip to Paris,” she said. “We went to the vintage store Didier Ludot, and I got a wonderful 1970s Hermès purse. I love Paris. And it’s so great when you go there and you’re in love.”